A little tweak that got me in the habit of using things like 5j and 6dd: :set relativenumber.
It numbers your current line as 0, and counts up and down from there. It makes it very easy to see that you need to delete the next 5 lines, or move up 10 lines without doing any math.
As for your mouse comment, I don't think you can compare the speed with which an experienced vim user gets their cursor where they want it to the catastrophic cache miss of removing your hand from the comfort of the home row, grabbing the mouse, moving it where you want, clicking it, and moving your hand back to the keyboard. The mere thought makes me shudder :)
It numbers your current line as 0, and counts up and down from there. It makes it very easy to see that you need to delete the next 5 lines, or move up 10 lines without doing any math.
As for your mouse comment, I don't think you can compare the speed with which an experienced vim user gets their cursor where they want it to the catastrophic cache miss of removing your hand from the comfort of the home row, grabbing the mouse, moving it where you want, clicking it, and moving your hand back to the keyboard. The mere thought makes me shudder :)